Key Topics in the Emerging Church

Key Topics in the Emerging
Church (2 of 3)

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Dr. Mark L. Bailey: Welcome
to DTS Dialogue -
Issues of God in Culture. I'm your host, Mark Bailey; I
have the privilege of serving as president of Dallas Theological
Seminary.

Today we want to interact on "key topics in the emerging church." We've
already dialogued on a general topic of the emerging church in an
earlier podcast. We want to take the opportunity today to dig in a
little bit deeper.

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That raises the next question, which is this pendulum swing between
orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Mark, it seems in the emerging church that
that pendulum is coming away from orthodoxy and to a bigger emphasis on
orthopraxy. But can you have one without the other?

There is no question that there have been those who have had orthodoxy
without the orthopraxy, the question is can you have orthopraxy without
orthodoxy, can you speak to that?

Dr. Mark Heinemann: Well,
certainly some people would say, "Yes, you can have them separated."
But the question is, does God separate them? And we could probably all
of us think of different examples where Christ or the Apostle Paul or
the Lord somehow makes it very clear, you know, all these things need
to be integrated together. So Paul says, for example, "I admit my
Jewish brethren have zeal, but it's without knowledge." John had a
great concern, he says "You say you have faith, but where are your acts
of faith?"

Jesus had a problem with Pharisees. They had the right acts, but they
didn't have the faith. And so God... I think you're absolutely right;
God, I think, is the one we need to look at, and Christ. What is their
concern? And their concern always seems to be for the whole person, an
integrated right belief, right action, right attitude, loving God with
all of our hearts, soul, mind, and strength.

The Shema in Deuteronomy 6 emphasizing that. And so I understand that
the emphasis on orthopraxy is another kind of a protest against a lot
of the hypocrisy, a lot of the consumerism, a lot of the nominal
Christianity, a lot of the compartmentalization of our lives, so that
we can have our cake and eat it too.

But I think ultimately, big picture wise, we want all these things
together, we want right belief, right action, we want right motives and
attitudes as well.

Mark Bailey: In a
new book that's edited by Robert Webber, called Listening to the Beliefs of the
Emerging Churches, which I appreciated the title -- not
the "emerging Church" but the "emerging Churches" -- with five
different authors, Mark Driscoll, John Burke, Dan Kimball, Doug Paget,
and Karen Ward.

In his summary Robert Webber argues that the emerging churches are
trying to find a balance in reaction to traditional evangelicalism,
that has theology but was weak in a applied ministry, and pragmatic
evangelism that was pragmatic but weak in theology.

And that they are trying to strike a balance, because both of those are
incomplete. And he sees a historic movement of the right doctrine, but
didn't result in the ministry of compassions that ought to have
happened.

And then there has been more of a consumer approach in an attempt to
reach the seeking person or the one that's not seeking, how do we get
them in the church. There has been incredible pragmatism with poor
theology. And so I appreciated, at least, his perspective of trying to
find a medium between those two.

The movie "Amazing Grace" is in the theaters right now, and in a
biography written by John Piper, published by Crossway, William
Wilberforce, who was fighting as a member of the British parliament in
the 18th and 19th centuries to end slave trade and stamp out some of
the social evils of his contemporary England.

And Wilberforce is quoted by Piper as saying, "The fatal habit of
considering Christian moral as distinct from Christian doctrines
insensibly gains strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity
went more and more out of sight. And as might naturally have been
expected the moral system itself also began to wither and decay, being
robbed of that which it have supplied it with life and nutriment."

And so orthopraxy without orthodoxy, and orthodoxy without orthopraxy,
are the errors of the extreme, and I found that helpful.

Andy, orthopraxy stems from good spiritual formation. You and the
Center of Christian Leadership obviously are greatly concerned about
spiritual formation, but in what ways does spiritual formation look
different in the emerging church, then maybe in the extremes that we've
talked about?

Dr. Andrew Seidel:
Well I think as a reactionary movement. The emerging church has looked
at the existing church and said that basically our spiritual formation
is discipleship and it's very programmatic, and they've said that you
follow through a series of steps or something like that, and then you
are a disciple.

And what they would say is that it's much more relational than that.
That the question is really, what us God doing in the life of the
person, and how do you connect with that, and how do you really
understand what God is doing, and help people understand how God is
using the experiences of their life to mold and develop them.

Scripture plays a significant role in that. There's no question about
that, but it's also more interactive than the programmatic form.

And so what they are doing is asking the kind of questions...In fact,
one of the things that was suggested by Reggie McNeil in one of his
books, is that when you have a new members class, you don't bring them
in and give them a packet of information about the church. You bring
them and start doing life coaching with them and find out, where are
you, and what does God do in your life, and would you like to see
happen in the months and years ahead while you're part of this body.
And so it's a very much more relational aspect.

It also goes to the spiritual disciplines, not that those were not a
part of the existing church, but I think there is a greater emphasis on
them, and the involvement of people in experiential elements of worship
-- all of this oriented toward connecting more personally with God, not
just with information, is what they would say. And I think one of the
things that this does, particularly as it relates with the worship
service, is it kind of restores some of the sense of majesty and glory
of God into the relationship that we have with Him.

And it's a departure -- I remember in earlier years among our churches,
evangelical churches, my church was one of them, and that is when we
built a new building there was very little in the way of religious
symbology in the building. There was a cross kind of up in the window
in front, but that was it. We had some people come in and say, "Gosh,
this is really a sterile environment." We'd have other people come in
and say, "Oh isn't it wonderful that you're not spending money on your
buildings."

I don't know which one was the right one, but what's being recovered
here is they bring more of the symbology and things into the
relationship with God, is a real sense of the majesty of God and
connection with the supernatural that I think is very helpful as it is
part of a growing and developing relationship where the Scripture is a
critical part of it. And so it kind of fills out the process, I think.

Mark Bailey: That's great. I
think that, well, when I was in seminary I went to seminary deficient
in liberal arts because I had a medical background. So I had to take a
course in western civilization at the junior college there, in Gresham,
Oregon, there at Mount Hood Community College while I was going to the
school.

And the teacher taught western civilization with a thread of church
architecture. I never found out what his spiritual orientation was, but
as he walked through western civilization, he showed the art and
architecture of the church -- where it went to the great spires which
reflected the majesty, and then thinking in those years, even initially
the fellowship churches started looking more like houses because of the
emphasis on fellowship and body life, as you say, rather than the
stained glass. And there's been some balancing and rebalancing of that
with bigger crosses and higher ceilings and different colored lights
and things over the last number of years I've noticed, even among more
evangelical churches.

But I thought it fascinating that the perception of God or the emphasis
of the church was reflected in the architecture, not just the style of
the services. Which relates to what you were just saying in terms of
there's a desire to reconnect with the divine, with the spiritual. And
the question becomes, how do we keep that from becoming just
ritualistic? And I think that becomes the balance factor again, because
we can return to the ritual without the relationship, and we can try to
have the relationship and not have any expression of it even in ritual.
And, again, the issue is balance of extremes.

Glenn: There's a place or
two, Mark, where I think it's helpful to talk theologically and
methodologically, that this rediscovery of historical practices of the
church is a really good thing, it's a very positive thing among
emerging churches and emerging conversations.

But sometimes I'd be concerned that there's the same kind of an
approach that one sees in cultural analysis, and even in biblical and
theological analysis, which I describe as kind of a "pick and choose",
eclectic approach without really considering the implications and the
contextualization of those practices in that cultural context. That
sometimes the cultural practice is then removed out of that cultural
context, put in this cultural context, as if somehow lighting candles,
for example, would be...

Lighting candles means different things in different cultural contexts
and in different places and I think what is desperately needed in this
conversation is a systematic theological evaluation of how to do
theology of culture, how to do historical theology and, obviously,
biblical and exegetical theology, too. And there's a place where this
conversation, and all theological conversations, need actually to be a
conversation, a dialogue, among people with a variety of perspectives
and expertise in the disciplines, so that we can actually learn and
grow together towards that end.

And the tragedy is that what often happens in controversial matters is
that there's an increasing polarity and a re-entrenchment rather than
coming to the table and engaging in a conversation. I think those
conversations, those dialogues, are good things, they're valuable, and
ought to be a friend. And we don't necessarily walk away seeing
everything exactly the same, but we agree on the essential things, and
then practice in a variety of contexts what that looks like.

Mark Bailey: This is a more
general question for all of you. When a movement is beginning, it often
begins at the expense of previous movements or previous experiences,
and in reaction to negative experiences. Some of these who write have
come to the church out of backgrounds that would have been rejected by
the church, and they have legitimate concerns that they didn't have a
place, they weren't received, they could have been helped earlier, etc.

How do we keep from feeling attacked by this movement, and how do we
engage in conversation with this movement without some of the more heat
that light in the polemics and some of the apologetics of it? Obviously
there are those in the movement that we would absolutely disagree with.
We would think that their theology was weak, if not poor. There are
some within the movement whose theology we probably share, but they've
chosen to do a different style of ministry.

How do we stay in the conversation, maybe even not as those who would
use the term "emerging" and profit from that conversation, and also
bring some profit to the conversation, with grace and humility, Mark,
like you mentioned? What are some ideas that those who listen to this
could pick up on?

Mark Heinemann:
Well, one of the things that hits me, and you mentioned this
book Listening
to the Voice of the Emerging Churches with these five
representatives kind of along a spectrum. They all almost to a person
made reference to the fact that what they really would have preferred
was to talk to each other in person.

And so we've got this little problem that we've got a whole lot more
information than we've got opportunity to actually interact with people
as people. And so they become icons or images of something we imagine
they are, which oftentimes they aren't. Maybe the answer is on the
internet, where you can at least have the responding back and forth.

But something that I've struggled with, even in preparation for this
conversation is wishing that I had more contact with someone in an
emerging church in our area. There don't seem to be very many -- I
tried to go to one over in Arlington and they had kind of fallen on
hard times.

So communication's got to be a part of it. How to pull that off, that's
tougher. We can't just load the faculty onto airplanes and fly them
around to different emerging churches, that's a tough one.

Mark Bailey: We had some of
our faculty attend some of those gatherings to hear it firsthand, and I
think that it's helpful to bring those kinds of conversations back to
us. Glenn?

Glenn: One of the reactions I
read to the first conversation we had from someone within the emerging
conversation was that he appreciated what we did, but he observed that
basically what we had done was talk about what we had read, and I
think, Mark, that you're right in pointing out that. I would also like
to say, though, that he gave us a pass by saying that he would expect
academics to deal with what has been published. But what has happened
in the couple of years since then is that there has been just a
proliferation of things that have been written. And I think there are
two things I would want to say.

One is that it's a whole lot more helpful if you want to understand, if
I want to understand what somebody believes, to read what that person
wrote rather than read somebody's summary of a synthesis of and
critique of. And it's been my experience in the Internet and email that
a great asset here is that people are usually pretty responsive to a
request to answer questions and to dialogue and get together. I think
that's one of the things to do.

And then the second thing, and here I'd like to speak to people like
us, those who are more mature and spiritual [laughs], no jokes there.
[laughs] I do think that it's incumbent on those who see themselves,
and appropriately so, as leaders, to learn how to listen, even to
voices that make us uncomfortable and that pain us a bit.

I had a conversation recently with a student and he was observing how
an artist to which he was listening...he said, "This guy's really
angry. What makes him so angry?" I think in a way to understand what
makes him so angry is to listen to what he says and to attempt to
understand him. To quickly say that what he says is so offensive to me,
I don't want to hear it, it cuts off the ability to understand, and if
dialogue is to occur, that's why we have to listen to one another, and
make sure we understand one another.

I want people who walk away from talking to me to understand what I
say, not what they think that I said. And I want to do the same thing
to others. If I summarize or reflect somebody's position, I want that
person to say, "Yeah, that's what I believe."; whether or not we agree
is a different issue.

And I think in the emerging conversation, I would like to be able to
say that this is lessening and decreasing, but I don't think that's the
case. What I think we see here is a defensive posture across the board
on both sides, throughout the continuum, and a difficulty in engaging
one another without immediately becoming judgmental.

Some of what I read and hear needs to be judged. Some of the
infatuation with atheism and with heresy -- when someone writes a book
called A
Heretics Guide to Eternity for example and affirms that
heresy is a good thing, we've got to say, "No." Heresy means something,
orthodoxy means something. I do know that orthodoxy develops through
conversation with heresy and heretics, but that doesn't mean that
heresy is a good thing.

If we ought to have a theistic and an atheistic theology, as somebody's
recently argued, then we basically have nothing. If it's good and bad,
true and false, then it's neither. So there is a time to be critical,
there is a time to say "yes" and "no." But that has to occur in the
context of understanding, and sometimes, many times, it's hard to
listen and to sort through things which make me uncomfortable and
nervous.

Andy: I think coming off of
that I would say that the basic way I'd describe it is a solid
humility. The humility to talk and to listen and to engage, but there's
a solidness about it, not a mushiness about it. In that regard, Mark, I
appreciate you because Center for Christian Leadership had Brian
McLaren here to speak to the people, and we've had Dan Kimball here to
speak, and I think that is a very, very positive thing.

And I learned that while I was in seminary reading Charles Ryrie's
book Dispensationalism
Today and then another author came out with the
book Amillennialism
Today. And when I read it his description of
dispensationalists, I would read it and I would think, "I don't believe
that. They're not teaching me that at Dallas Seminary. Where did that
come from?"

And it was like it wasn't reacting to what was happening here among
dispensationalists, but it was kind of a caricature.

And I think to have the solidness to say, "Let's talk to the people who
are really in this and have a dialogue with them, not just articles and
books about them from others", and I think that's a very positive way
of moving on. So I appreciate what you've done here at the seminary
that's enabled us to do that.

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Dr. Mark Bailey: To have a
conversation with someone doesn't mean we endorse everything.

Andy: Right.

Dr. Mark Bailey: And for them
to talk to us doesn't mean they endorse us.

Andy: Right.

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